Dr Rob Amos

Overview

Biography

Dr Rob Amos joined Birkbeck as a Lecturer in Law in 2025, and specialises in environmental law. He previously held lectureships at the universities of Greenwich and Nottingham, as well as research positions at UCL and Sussex University. Rob is on the editorial board of the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy. He has guest-lectured at the University of Cambridge and UCL's Energy Institute, and supervised dissertations on UCL's LLM in Environmental Law and Policy.

Rob also has extensive experience in innovative curriculum design, having led on several research- and practice-based pedagogical initiatives, in law and across disciplines.

Complementing his academic work, Rob is involved in several conservation organisations. He is President of the Alpine Garden Society (serving 2024-2028) and a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.

Office hours

By appointment.

Qualifications

• FHEA, HEA, 2023
• PhD, Sussex University, 2017
• LLM, UCL, 2013
• LLB, Swansea University, 2012

Research

Research interests

• Biodiversity and conservation law
• Environmental, ecological and animal justice
• Sustainability learning

Research overview

Rob's research interrogates the relationships between nature and humanity, challenging unsustainable status quos that drive the climate and ecological emergency. He adopts a deliberately interdisciplinary approach, drawing particularly on conservation and ecological science and environmental/ecological philosophy. Current work in this area includes:

• A comprehensive assessment of the state of nature and of nature conservation law in the UK post-Brexit (with Prof. Jane Holder, UCL).
• Exploring the overlaps and tensions between animal and environmental justice.
• A new edition of the Research Handbook on Biodiversity and Law (Edward Elgar, co-edited with Dr Edward Goodwin, Nottingham University), which includes contributions from an international range of academics, practising lawyers and conservation scientists.

Rob is also active in the field of sustainability learning in higher education, i.e. how a person's time at university can equip them with the skills and knowledge needed to aid society in its pursuit of sustainability. With colleagues, he is writing a monograph on how sustainability concepts and practices are embedded in the global higher education sector, and he is preparing a research article on depression, connection to nature and the legal academy.

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

I welcome PhD enquiries on:

• Biodiversity and conservation law
• Environmental, ecological and animal justice
• Sustainability learning
• The nature of and approaches to environmental legal scholarship

I am particularly keen to supervise projects with a strong interdisciplinary element.

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Environmental Law (Level 5, 15 credits) (LALW025H5)
• Equity and Trusts (GDL) (LALW117H6)

Publications